


Hot Coffee With Milk

by MQCFHaken



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Assorted Hetero Sex Acts, Assorted-ish Lesbian Sex Acts, Ether Kink courtesy of several stolen Ether Canons, F/F, F/M, Horny AU of Vargras's innocent Postgame AU, Intermittent Non-Smut Chapters, Most of this fic is "what if Pneuma had not-horny issues and a bunch of expedient horny solutions", Multi, Ongoing by Popular Demand, Rex would rather Make Love than Fuck but god help you if you push him, no not Ether Cannons but I'll get back to you on elsepairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-09-25 15:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17123576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MQCFHaken/pseuds/MQCFHaken
Summary: She had a problem with getting too logical with things. What was meant to be an incidental fix turned it into a problem of getting too romantic with things.A bizarre and kinky offshoot of the Pneuma Lives headcanon from "Afterlife" by Vargras, focused on the True Aegis developing a proclivity to get Too Lewd. Previously uploaded as Et Torques Collo Tuo, which is now the first chapter.





	1. Et Torques Collo Tuo

**Author's Note:**

> PREVIOUS STANDALONE DESCRIPTION:  
> She came back with Proverbs 4:18 written upon her chest and 1:9 in her heart.
> 
> Self-indulgent Golden Ending lewdness branching off Vargras' "Afterlife", wherein Pneuma finds herself compelled to imprint on the "Master" part of Rex's Master Driver title, and all too willing to love every minute of it.
> 
> More or less ever since Pneuma became a thing in my XC2 playthrough, I felt I had to eventually try and write something that would work her into the Post-Game Rexbowl without simply being "Pyra and Mythra fuse and their combined thirst becomes the only relevant trait." Eventually I narrowed it down to this, and a Genderbent Rex pitch that kept getting shot down on Discord. Might try writing that too eventually, who knows.
> 
> Everything that's Gratuitously Biblical uses King James Version translations, because those had the highest kink coefficient on short notice.
> 
> If for some reason you want better worldbuilding than what the first few paragraphs offer, this fic can probably branch off from Vargras's "Afterlife" a few days/weeks following Chapter 7, barring some contradictory notions of geography and wholesomeness (including, for the latter, most of Chapter 2 of a certain Treatise by JLDavenport).

    "Rex, did you...ever get intimate with either of those two before I got here?"  
      
    The Salvager blanched hearing the question from out in the vegetable patch. It was pretty pointed to be asked in broad daylight, especially given 'those two' in question weren't in earshot. But considering who was asking, he swallowed his shock and rose from the weeds he was presently tearing out, set on giving an honest answer.  
    "Uh...a couple times, yeah. Like, the first month and a half after the World Tree came down. Everything was kind of a whirlwind of interviews and maps being redrawn and tryin' to keep our heads from getting big from all the revelations...eventually we finally got a minute to ourselves back here in Fonsett, the separation anxiety sprang up an' hit us like a bucking Ardun..." Amber eyes shy away from their emerald opposites as Rex searches for the words.  
    "That evening, we just...all decided at once we didn't want to let go. And couldn't stand havin' anything in the way of each other, either."  
      
    The interloper smiles. "And that's when the clothes started coming off, and you all tumble into bed because you can't-"  
      
    He responds by holding a shushing finger to her lips. "Y'don't have to start narrating the rest of the act...you know, I'm starting to get what Mythra was going off about before she and Pyra left on their little humanitarian jaunt." The Aegises in question were, in fact, absent from their Driver's homestead and even from the Titans currently comprising Leftheria, off helping some encampment or another of Indoline refugees resettle either in their currently occupied Titan or the townships starting to extend out from the major Titans and onto what was being called 'the Elysian Continent.' "You're looking at things too clinically because you think they have more of a right to be emotional about things than you do..."  
    The finger rises off her lips, and boops her nose before being pulled back. "...Or I'm the one overthinking it, and you're just jealous."  
      
    She giggles from the mild push. "Maybe...maybe it's a little of both. I start getting ahead of myself predicting what actually transpired, but at the heart of it all, it's a memory they have but I don't, and it...yeah, it's definitely a little of both. Story of my life, ain't it?"  
      
    "...does it feel weird to you, still?" Rex steers his companion towards the front porch, midday sun beginning to glint too harshly off her metallic accents. "Being able to say 'story of YOUR life' and things like that? Being...you, apart from being Pyra and Mythra synced together?"  
      
    Pneuma tilts her head down, briefly pondering her Core Crystal before answering. "...yeah. The kind of weird that keeps me up at night if I wind up not drifting into Elysium as soon as I close my eyes." Being alive following what had been a rather explosive self-sacrifice was one thing, but coming back from certain death to find A) she was no longer a gestalt being, and B) the selves that once comprised her came back almost immediately while she'd taken a year to return? It was enough to cause an existential crisis on par with what had come before for Mythra, no doubt. "And even if I do, it's...a lot of time I wind up thinking, alone, about what I am and am not."  
      
    "Well, for what it's worth, I still think you had a pretty good answer about what you want to be when I asked those first couple of nights." Removing a glove, Rex scratches at the back of his head. "Compassionate, ready with an answer to everything...but ready to give a little sass where it's deserved."  
      
    "And those are all things I still want to be, but...it's all bits and pieces that I'm taking from my sisters, and everyone else who traveled with us. Us?...You? Am I...can I be counted among tha-"  
      
    She's interrupted by the brunette diving in for a kiss, the sudden suction on her lips sucking out both her next few words and the anxiety packed into them. After a little tongue-batting, Rex parts back with a smile. "I'm definitely counting you as one of us. Even when you were just your sisters put together, and even before we learned about the Conduit and all that...I felt there was a resolve coming forth from you that was a little more than just Pyra and Mythra combined. And right now, I think there might be somethin' buried in there that can make you...uniquely *you*."  
      
    "Something buried inside me that isn't part of Pyra or Mythra..." Pneuma mulls this for a few moments, but turns back to Rex with a grimace. "All I can think of that counts is all the junk from the old world. The Conduit, being a Trinity Processor core...stuff that it'd be fruitless to try and reclaim now. Not that I--we--ever had any particular affection for that stuff to begin with. And yet..."  
      
    "And yet what?"  
      
    "And yet every other morning--I at least want to say every morning after I've spent the night in Elysium--I wake up, and there's something in the back of my head playing at being a computer, and it throws errors in the corner of my eye as it tries to authenticate to servers that are long gone, and it starts building up an irritating buzz with each failure...but then I see your face, or hear you whistling in the shower, and suddenly whatever it is *clicks* and the buzzing stops. Or if I catch sight of you early enough into it, it melts into this warm and fuzzy tingle-"  
      
    "Would you call that tingle...'blushy-crushy'? Asking for a friend."  
      
    Rex gets a jab in the bicep for that one as the ponytailed Aegis continues. "But yeah, as soon as I recognize you in the morning, the buzzing either stops or turns...blushy-crushy...for a few seconds, and my consciousness stops trying to be half-computer and starts being, well, whatever's managed to add up to 'me' so far."  
      
    "Huh. Everyone laughs at me being a big ball of positivity, but I never thought there'd be someone for whom it was ACTUALLY infectious." Now it's his turn to be ushered towards shade as the noontime sun begins its creeping assault on the porch. Once he and Pneuma are safely inside, he ducks into the kitchen to draw a couple of mugs of water before resuming. "So...it's specifically me that this keys to?"  
      
    "As far as I know. If I'm turned around in bed that morning and wind up facing Pyra or Mythra, that's not usually enough for it to infer that you're there."  
      
    "And even though it sounds World Tree-related, it's nothing either of them have complained about..." The Salvager takes a pensive sip. "Does it give you a list of what it's trying to connect to?"  
      
    "...Rhadamantus is always first. Then Aion.[1] Then it starts going through a list of ground stations that were ruined either by the Morythans' last conflicts or Father's experiment. I think the most it's ever tried to go through before it clicked to you and stopped was a hundred and change."  
      
    "But it always ends with me, and I always interrupt it going down that list?"  
      
    Pneuma fidgets with her diadem. "Yeah."  
      
    "So it always tries to connect to direct interfaces for the Trinity Processor first, then the ground stations as a last resort, but I have priority in the middle because-"  
      
    It dawns on them both at once, and they say it in unison: " _The Master Driver._ "  
      
    "Cor, that's something I haven't been called in a _long_ time!" Rex's eyes brighten a bit at the memory. "Great suit for salvaging, but spend too long running around in it at night and I start sympathizing with Pyra about being glow-in-the-dark...Y'think we could try making it again next time I get in on a big job?"  
      
    "With just my ether? It...could happen, but that'd still be a tremendous amount to create that much matter, with that many moving parts--the only thing really making it possible without the Conduit is the fact that we already know what it looks like and how it fits together. And keeping that much ether flowing around and into you at salvage dive depths means side effects. Ones we might need Nia's help dealing with."  
      
    "Oof. If it's that risky, we better not try doin' it off the cuff..." Rex stares into the rest of his mug, pondering a bigger and murkier deep, before quickly quaffing it. "But back to what the Master Driver means to you. Your wake-up start-up sequence...it only resolves itself properly because I hold that title?"  
      
    The emerald-haired Aegis stares into her mug, seemingly at her reflection within. "I...guess? It's the only part left in Father's old hierarchy that my low-level subconscious can reach out and touch."  
      
    "An' the faster you lock onto me, the more likely it is to give you that blushy-crushy feedback?"  
      
    "So far, yes."  
      
    "All right, experiment time." Rex places his free hand limp on the table, fingers curling to beckon Pneuma to take it. When she does, and their eyes lock... "Reauthenticate with me."  
      
    The next few seconds pass in a tense silence, the Blade's gaze listing off from her Driver's towards her left - no doubt to the HUD popping up in her mind's eye. At the seven-second mark, though, she snaps back to attention, letting out a sharp-but-not-pained gasp as her gloved hand squeezes Rex's. "Mmmnnnn~" Pneuma slurs out with the faintest pink of a blush crossing her cheeks.  
      
    "Huh, so that's what it looks like..." The brunette withdraws his hand momentarily. "Bit of a zoning-out period there, wonder what that's about."  
      
    "That'd be...me trying to reach the two Rhadamantus hosts first."  
      
    "Could you...jigger the order a bit?" Rex shrugs as he fails to find a more specific word for it. "We know it's never going to find anything valid other than me, since they're all physically gone."  
      
    "I...give me a minute." The Aegis closes her eyes, stilling her breathing as her focus slips away from the physical world and towards that mental script in need of untold centuries' worth of updating. As she slips into the trance state, Rex can't help but notice the only motion coming from her is the minute rise and fall of her generous, mesh-ensconced bust, emphasized that much more by Pneuma taking close to eight seconds for a full inhale/exhale.  
    Five such undulations run their course. Then eight. Then ten. Then Pneuma's voice snaps the salvager out of his own trance. "Okay, Rex. Say the word."  
      
    He looks back up at her face - her eyes remain closed. Or could she have opened them while Rex's focus was...elsewhere? Could she have left/been leaving her eyes Brighid Closed, dooming him from the start? He swallows the one nervous query that could shatter the moment - better to do what they set out to do first and seek forgiveness when she tips her hand. "All right...reauthenticate."  
    Green eyes snap open, and the next few seconds become a blur of motion and emotion. Rex can hardly tell when the 'happy jolt' from the successful authentication actually hit Pneuma, because he's hit by the green-haired Blade jumping almost clean across the table, wrapping an arm around his shoulder while paying back the stolen kiss from minutes before with interest. The heat in his mouth and the adrenaline from being seized up in her embrace strike the familiar spark of an Ether Link in his core, and the wispy blue tether bombards him with a jumbled cocktail of feelings of fulfillment, joy, liberation, and...something with a more primal tinge entwined in it all.  
    The realization of the nature of that secret ingredient hits just hard enough for the Driver's wide eyes to harden as Pneuma finally breaks off the kiss, not even inching back from being bent halfway over the table. "That's not blushy-crushy at all, that's...a lot more mature. Like you were getting off on that!"  
      
    The peachy blush returns to the Aegis's cheeks as she puts on a sheepish grin. "I-I'm sorry, Master, I jus-" And then it goes clean to rose pink as Pneuma slaps a hand over her mouth, realizing all too late what she'd just said.  
      
    "...you _were_ getting off on that, weren't you? Callin' me Master out of the blue like that!"  
      
    She nods, face still rapidly reddening with shame.  
      
    The catty grin melts off of Rex's face, and he defaults to the earnest concern he's had so far. "...look, maybe it's just a side effect of you cleaning the gunk out of your wake-up imprint whatever. If it's an involuntary thing like the headaches, we can work around-"  
      
    "...Rex." She whispers ever-so-faintly, finally pulling back to a seated position but keeping one hand clasped around her Driver's. "...I don't think this is as involuntary as you think it might be. Or...maybe part of me wishes it weren't, and another part is jumping for joy because it is. I'm as confused as you are...and at the same time, I feel like my mind hasn't been that clear since that night at the Cliffs of Morytha. The night you took us back and made us one for the first time."  
      
    "Titan's foot, THAT's what was running through your head when they--you--became Pneuma for the first time?"  
      
    "Not with so much awkward physical lust, but...yeah. We _belonged_ to you, Rex. Despite all our own flaws, despite the pain and torment you went through on our behalf, despite us saying we wanted to go to Elysium for self-destructive reasons...you wouldn't let us go. You wanted us to share in that vision of a better world, and find our own place in it...and once we realized that place was at your side, that was enough to give us the strength to see it through to the end."  
      
    Rex had to take a second to pick his jaw back up from that one. For justifying a wild display of affection, that confession cut awfully deep. "And now that you're your own person, long past the end of that journey...is that really--is that the way you want to belong to me?"  
      
    For a second, Pneuma is thankful her mug of water has remained untouched all this while. She needs something to help her pause and process her answer--instinct and hormones are telling her it's an easy affirmative, but logic drives hard to rein them in, reminding her that saying Yes would be one of those Heavy Truths that had Consequences. Half the liquid is gone before she can give the answer she's most comfortable giving--another question. "If I say Yes...what winds up changing in our lives?"  
      
    The salvager finds himself being the one in need of a stiff drink now, nervously rubbing his temples for lack of one. "I guess that depends on exactly how far we're willing to go with it? I mean, I can kinda feel that you want something a little more forceful than a Master-and-Maid relationship like Tora and Poppi's, but at the same time it's probably not in either of our best interests to be invitin' the Judgment of Thassaly on our little corner of Fonsett."[2]  
      
    The Blade cocks an eyebrow. "Judgment of what?"  
      
    "An old Sunday School parable. Didn't think much of it as a kid, not being a Driver and all, but the story goes 'round 2000 years ago, this Titan called Thassaly was ruled by a society that treated Blades as little more than herd animals, working 'em around the clock and penning 'em up in cages when they collapsed from overwork but hadn't burnt out so bad they returned to their Core Crystals... 'course, it wasn't till I got a little older that I learned the parson skipped over a couple of verses 'bout them using the girl-types as 'whipping-post wives'. Long story short, an angel catches sight of this, the Architect becomes displeased with the mistreatment of His children, the whole Titan goes down in waves of holy flame."  
      
    "I can neither confirm nor deny the firing of any Echelon Siren armament during the approximate range of Titan Cycles 1800 through 2300," Pneuma flatly half-jokes. "...I imagine the 'whipping-post wives' part was just being reserved for the grown-up's version of the sermon?"  
      
    "You're getting _that look._ " The brunette's eyes lock back with his mate's, concern trying to overpower the blush on his cheeks. "You feel guilty as anythin' for wanting it, but you want it. I've seen that look often enough with Pyra and new kitchenware to know where this is going."  
      
    "Tch...you read me too well, Rex."  
      
    Rex takes her hand once again and gives it a gentle squeeze while shooting Pneuma a grin easily rated at 350 milliNias of slyness. "As well your Master should."  
      
    Emerald eyes flicker between demure anxiety and puppy-dog brightness. "Y-you're really OK with-"  
      
    "Well, I'd like to think we have enough of an idea of each other's limits to keep anything _wrong_ from happening. And maybe it's just a phase, or maybe we'll wind up carrying on like this for a while...all we can really do is give it a shot and face it together, same as always."  
      
    "Give it a shot, like...right now?" She's still torn between confusion and excitement, but the latter seems to be winning the tug-of-war.  
      
    "I dunno if it matters, since I can apparently say one word whenever and make you practically beg for it, but right now's as good a time as any." Rex scoots out of his seat still gripping Pneuma's hand, leading her towards the stairs up to the bedrooms.  
    

* * *

  
      
    Almost as soon as Driver and Blade stepped through the doorway into Rex's bedroom (well, his and three Aegises' at this point), they wrangled themselves into states of giddy half-undress. A crackle of Almighty Ether did away with the hard and otherwise pointy ends of Pneuma's armor, leaving her in a skintight black-and-white rashguard that'd have been perfect for a dive off Messet Point were their afternoon tryst more innocent. Rex was almost as easy to disrobe, having needed only a khaki tunic and shorts for the day's gardening rather than the quick-to-watertight bulk of his Salvager Suit.  
    Before the emerald-haired maiden could yank down his boxers as well, though, he brought a hand up to her chin, cradling it delicately. "All right, so...final check before we do this. Last chance for you to back out, and us to just...go about our day."  
      
    The Aegis stifles a giggle. "So serious all of a sudden..."  
      
    "Team diving instinct, you know? Everything's gotta be perfect right before you go in the deep."  
      
    "Right, right..." Pneuma withdraws the hand that'd been pinching Rex's waistband and takes his own outstretched hand in it. "I want this, though. Ever since we cut the chaff out of that script, I've been aching for it...maybe even before that, given I just came up to you out of nowhere and asked if you ever did this with my sisters."  
      
    "Not gonna lie, I've been...wanting it for a while, too. To be able to share this with you, remind you that you're not just spare parts in this weird and wonderful family we've been turning into." The brunette lets out an anxious breath. "Last chance for us to do it as just _us_. I don't need you calling me Master just for the sake of stroking my ego."  
      
    "I'm not backing out of that one either, Rex...er, Master." She leans in for a light kiss on the lips. "My heart and my life belong to you, and that puts me in the middle of a four-way tie for the Happiest Girl in Alrest...and now I want my body to experience that, too. Every touch and thrust and pulsation, I want to revel in knowing I'm being used by such a wonderful person. And I want to be used so thoroughly by the end of it all that I'm murmuring in my sleep how wonderful it is to be Master's cumdu-"  
      
    The split second before she can finish, a stinging slap resounds across the Aegis's cheek. She turns back to Rex, and there's a fire in his amber eyes--a slowly-smouldering, rumbling flame the like she hadn't seen--indeed, no soul in Alrest had seen--since the night he and his journeymen challenged Malos to wrest her and/or her sisters from what they thought was a deserved oblivion. "You're not using that word for what we do here. You're not calling yourself a cumdump, or a meat toilet, or any of the other words on that spectrum--don't try any loopholes or new ones, either; I've seen almost all of 'em between your average trashy novels and those Ancient Morythan Tableaus that Adenine's taken to translating and peddling lately. Those words are for women who have had all dignity torn from them...that's not the case for you.  
    "Prostrate yourself before me, swear yourself to me, brag all you want about being my slave...but never forget that you _chose_ this! You came back from certain death--you _fell from Heaven_ \--and serving me with your flesh wasn't a duty imprinted upon you as a Blade, or an Aegis, or a Trinity Processor core! It was your _choice_ , as a woman, as Pyra and Mythra's sister, and as a bloody pervert!"  
    Before Pneuma's shock can subside and allow her to process the fury in Rex's voice, he leans in to embrace her, tugging down on the inner mesh covering her collar and laying a line of butterfly kisses up her neck. "And I'm honored beyond honors," he continues, soft and mellow as if nothing ever happened, "that a woman of such heavenly temperament, of such dignity second only to her Father, would swear herself to me in the name of unbridled womanly lust."  
      
    She sniffles slightly, letting the welling redness in her eyes melt into tears of joy as her knees go weak. "M-Master....thank you..."  
      
    The brunette chokes up, half from the dryness in his throat following that monologue, and half... "Aww, don't tell me the pain's what's getting you off-"  
      
    "No, not that...for the reminder." She slinks down onto her knees using Rex's legs as support, hands once again grasping his underwear and yearning to claim her prize. "For reminding me of the weight of my choice to become yours. Of my nature as a divine being that can't be suppressed or defiled just because I'm yours...no, it can only be amplified because I surrender myself to such a wonderful man and a thoughtful Master."  
    Pneuma finally pulls down the elastic, revealing her love's upright manhood, finally free to be worshipped as she has worshipped the rest of him. "Master...please use any of my holes that you wish, and anoint me as a Holy Grail that overflows with your love and your seed~"  
      
    "Hah...you runneth over already with sweet nothings whispered of your fealty." With one hand tilting his cock downward and the other tugging Pneuma's head inward by her ponytail, Rex gives silent but clear instruction that the green-haired Aegis is all too eager to obey, first pursing her lips up and down his glans then deepthroating her Driver as grateful eyes loll upward. "You have your sisters' instinct to start with using your mouth, though, and we should both be glad for that. At some point you have to stop breathlessly bragging about being my obedient, slutty chalice and start _being_ my obedient, slutty chalice, y'know?"  
      
    A muffled affirmative sounding too long to be "Mm-hmm" but a little short to be "Yes, Master" bounces around the Grail-trainee's cheeks as her tongue continues caressing the length of her Master's shaft. Gloved hands help communicate the intent as they begin to poke and prod at the base and balls, cool ether-weave gingerly massaging the traditionally profane flesh and trickling minute quantities of ether into Rex's erectile tissue, reinforcing it for the aftermath of the first of what'd hopefully be a long string of emissions.  
      
    "You must really love being called that, because you're playing such wonderful ether tricks with my dick right now~" Rex grunted as he savored another few deep and velvety soft thrusts into his chalice's throat--on top of the invigorating chill at his base, he could feel Pneuma's tongue acting as the conducting rod of a wildly contradictory breath/ether flow that presently wrapped his length in tight high pressures, comforting warmth, and pleasant electric pinpricks. For all the thought he'd given to weaving Pyra and Mythra's ether talents into lovemaking, he'd never conceived of the chromatic symphony their sister was treating him to without a second thought--without any help from the Conduit!--all to welcome him into her throat-pussy and to make its traverse almost exactly like the real thing. "I hope you've got yourself rigged into this too, because you're making it REALLY hard for me to hold it in much longer...and you REALLY deserve to cum from treating your Master to such an incredible throat fuck~"  
      
    A giddy moan resounds from the back of the Aegis's throat as she starts bobbing her head back and forth faster, more eager than ever to coax out her Master's seed. Her eyes fluttered shut as her mind's eye opened to the rigging that Rex envisioned--in her entranced state, she'd already been subconsciously pooling ether around her nethers, nipples, and areolae to form extra clusters of nerves, all to heighten the joy of succumbing to Master's touch and compel adoration for his manhood etching itself into her insides. It was almost child's play to patch those new nerve centers to receive feedback from the fellatio dynamo roiling in her mouth, to will them to fire off the second Master commanded her to drown in pleasure...  
    Command her he soon did, as a triumphant growl heralded the spurts of white-hot semen blasting into her mouth, signaling for her to ignite the same warm and prickly pleasure along her freshly-laid ether nerves. Every throb against Pneuma's cheeks and jaw was copied and magnified into a sympathetic clench of each of her other two holes, and the gem set in her diadem (blunted, _en flagrante_ , from the crystal horn she usually sported) alighted with every shudder to signal what eyes tightly closed in reverence couldn't: she had achieved release alongside Master's own emission, surrendered herself to it in time with his anointment, and gratefully swallowed back every salty drop save for a couple sultrily frothing at the corners of her lips.  
    Lost in her own afterglow as she was, she even found cause to worship Rex extracting himself from her maw. A goodbye tongue-lashing let her greedily memorize the ridges of her Master's raw, but still formidable, glans and savor the last salty trickles of his manhood, kept warm by the spent ether that deflated rapidly from its mouth-pussy maelstrom lattice. When he was free of her, she finally resumed her permission to breathe, jaw hanging slack as she let out a series of ragged, satisfied gasps.  
      
    "Aw, man, that was..." Rex laid his hands upon Pneuma's shoulders as he caught his own breath, content for her to clasp at his hips in return. "That was _magic_ right there, Pneuma. I didn't think gettin' oral could ever feel HALF as good as that...you certainly weren't doing any favors for my stamina, though. Mythra'll never let me live down how FAST that flew by if she ever finds out."  
      
    "Well, that's what _she_ wants out of an intimate encounter, and this is what _I_ want." She leans in to brush at his recovering shaft with the outside of her cheek. "I think you being kind of a quick shot for now works out well...I want Master to use all of my slutty chalice holes in rapid succession, and make me overflow in each of them without worrying about stopping or getting bogged down halfway."  
      
    "At least you're cheating on my behalf to help make that happen...I appreciate that." He strokes her emerald locks gently, ever-so-briefly wondering what other carnal ether arts she'd been devising. She'd loved being led around by her ponytail just moments before, for instance, would it be so much as a stretch for her to _love_ having it _yanked_ sometime later? "...it's not occurred to you yet to undress for the next one?"  
      
    Pneuma shrugs before rising to her feet. "You never gave the order, Master."  
      
    "Good." As she finds her footing on her 2-inch heels, Rex takes the length of mesh surrounding her bountiful G-cups and yanks down, forcing the creamy breasts through the bodysuit's cleavage window and letting the recoiling fabric prop them upward. "Because I only really need access to these, and THESE-" He repeats the action on the raised white plate above her mons, peeling away the rubbery length concealing her slick vagina and anus as one would an ornery corner of shrink wrap.  
      
    "Master, you...don't want to see me naked?"  
      
    "I'm sure you look wonderful in the nude...no way you wouldn't, with how much you're like your sisters." The brunette teasingly digs a fingernail ever-so-slightly into the side of her left nipple, waiting for her intrigued moan before continuing. "But as my Holy Grail, you need to be well aware that those two stretches of fabric are the ONLY things that divide your two selves. Keep 'em in the proper place, and you're the perfectly presentable Master Blade, erstwhile companion of the Master Driver..." He cups the same breast, thumb holding still over the top of her nipple, waiting for her to satisfactorily finish the sentence.  
      
    She shivers happily as she finds her answer. "...but remove them, and I'm the Master Driver's pleasure slave, whose chalice holes ache to be violated~"  
      
    "Good girl~" As he resumes tweaking the one breast in his hand, he plants a tugging kiss on the other, lapping at the fine bumps of her areola. "And these feel like they've been dying to be used properly, too. Are you achin' to turn Aegis Milk Earl Grey into the next big tea sensation in Fonsett?"  
      
    "I'm still shocked my sisters haven't done that already by now...if Master ever wants to branch out into dairy cattle, please take me into consideration~"  
      
    "Sounds like you want me to see how good a milker you are right now~" Rex gives his charge a quick peck on the lips--either Pneuma was super-thorough in cleaning up the last of his previous load, or she'd tinted what remained with ether, but there was a mild and hardly unwelcome tinge of vanilla. "Turn 'round and bend over the foot of the bed. Not too far, just enough that I get a clear shot at your bum. Spread your legs 'bout half a ped, make sure you don't put all the weight on your back."  
      
    "M-my butt? I mean, not that I mind-" She was complying, sure enough. "-but what's it have to do with milking?"  
      
    "Well, it wouldn't be sporting if it was a one-way street." The Driver draws right behind her, letting his recharged manhood graze against her supple, rubber-sheathed buttocks. "So while I'm trying to squeeze the milk out of you, you'll be using your bum to squeeze the milk out of me~"  
      
    The ponytailed Aegis lets out a giddy squeal. "Aaaaaah~ Master's going to give me even more of his dick milk~"  
      
    "Cor, Addam told me _I_ was the greedy one..." He cups her hips first, steadying them both as he slowly plunges into her rear entrance, grunting as the last of his length finally breaches and relaxes Pneuma's rectal resistance. "Doesn't even feel like you were loosening yourself up with ether, either. How long've you been waiting to have this buried in your arse?"  
      
    "N-not nearly long enough..." As Rex's hands feel their way up her abdomen, she bucks her hips methodically, trying to find the range where he can keep pumping inside her while playing with her dangling tits. "That's not a question you ask someone who's barely been themself for a month!"  
      
    "So at least that whole time, then?" He playfully presses as his hands finally snake up his Blade's chest, fingers pressing nipples between them with the gingerest of pinches. "Even those first couple of minutes you thought you were just the sum of your sisters?"  
      
    "Hey, that's dirty pooUAAAAGH~" She yelps as she's cut off by Rex punctuating a slow, deep thrust with tortuous twin pinches at her nubs. "A-asking me something so shameful while you're making me feel so good~"  
      
    "You're cute when you're flustered, though. No different from your sisters there, either~" He slides inside once more, this time adding a forward tug to his squeezing of Pneuma's nipples.  
      
    "Aaaaaah~ T-that one hurrrrrrt~"  
      
    Rex gulps, letting his fingers return to rest against her areolae. "S-should I back off on that? Or...or should I pull out?"  
      
    The Aegis turns back toward her lover, wearing her own one-third-of-a-Nia grin. "You're pretty cute when you're flustered too, Master~" She bucks her hips, finishing the undulation her Driver was in the middle of at about double the intended speed, purring as he once more slams into her colon. "And keep going with my tits, too...it hurts but it dulls really quickly and it feels heavy with the ether flowing in and-"  
      
    "And you can't wait to be-" The brunette grunts as he takes the message from Pneuma's show of initiative, rapidly pulling back after burying his cock as deep in her as it'll go, then shoving it right back in just as quickly. "-railed so hard...it all gets squeezed out of you..."  
      
    "Yessss~" She moans as another pinch-and-tug electrifies her nipples, dragging more ether into her milk ducts and making the petit pink flesh of her breasts even more delightfully tender. "I want Master to...squeeze all the slutty Aegis milk out of meeeee~"  
      
    "Ungh...your arse is still so tight-" While Rex's thrusts get still faster, his hands start tugging the green-haired Blade's breasts back into her chest, beckoning her to slowly rise from her bent-over posture. "-glad you're still so eager to reciprocate!"  
      
    "Master's in my ass~" Pneuma moans half to herself. "Master's dick milk is all gonna pump into my ass~"  
      
    "I'm almost there, Pneuma, you've been so good~" He can feel his own pressure building to unbearable levels, his pumping slowing to prepare for one forceful thrust. The Driver actually bends his knees down just a bit, presumably to get that extra oomph...but the force from bending back up also gives him just enough momentum to lift his lover off her heels and spin backwards on his own, putting Pneuma face-to-face with her reflection in the full-length mirror opposite the foot of the bed.  
    "Take a good look, you look so beautiful~" She does so, through fluttering eyes, taking in the sight of her bodysuit torn open just enough to make her vulnerable, her breasts cupped from behind in firm--but not cruel--hands, her last unused entrance sopping wet and trickling down one leg in anticipation...  
      
    "Beautiful~"  
    "My beautiful Holy Grail..."  
    "...Master's Holy Grail~"  
    " _Runneth over for me._ "  
      
    Every bit of wound-up energy in the room seems to release itself on Rex's whispered command. His cock spurts relentlessly, molten trickles firing upward and splashing against Pneuma's colon walls. Her breasts flash equally white-hot as thin milk spurts from so many pinpricks, coating the tips of her Master's fingers. The couple's back-heavy weight tips over amid their shared climax, Rex's back thudding against the foot of the bed as they slump down, still seated in front of the mirror--the Final Aegis still staring in awe at her condition, her position...  
    Her reflection smiles back, eyes aglow in a mellow wash to contrast her glittering ether accents and Core Crystal.  
      
    And then it doesn't quite, as her dazed gaze is obscured by a waving hand. "Helloooooooo~ Pneuma, y'alright?"  
      
    "Mmmmnnnnnnn~" She slurs as she shifts her hips, rolling off of her Driver's deflated penis but content with staying in his lap. "N-never better~"  
      
    Rex, for what she can tell in the periphery of her reflection, doesn't seem to mind. "What'cha thinkin' about?"  
      
    "Being yours...how good it feels..."  
      
    "Huh. Would explain why you've been starin' at yourself for a good little bit."  
      
    She blushes. "You said it yourself...I look beautiful like this. As Master's plaything."  
      
    "How long you gonna be spaced out like this?" Almost reflexively, Rex wraps his arms around her belly. "N-not that I'm in a hurry or anything..."  
      
    "How long will you keep me in your arms like this?" Her own hands start idly tracing at her Driver's thighs, fingers slaloming between the first few strands of leg hair to peek out.  
      
    "If I could, I'd hold you like this till tomorrow mornin'..." The other shoe drops half a second after the words leave the salvager's lips, and he elbows the bed in consternation. "Dammit, that's payback for the embarrassing questions earlier, ain't it?"  
      
    "That's me honestly asking, but we can call it that...you'd turn it around on me too, if I said I wanted to stay in your arms forever."  
      
    "...do you?"  
      
    "If I could, I would, but there's something very important we have to separate from each other for first." She sets a hand on Rex's enjoined fingers, and they slowly part.  
      
    "We're...are we done now? I thought you still wanted me to-"  
      
    "I do." With her lover's grip relaxed, Pneuma scoots forward so she's no longer sitting on his legs. "But not right after it's been in my ass. Blades have fairly idealized anatomy, but just like with humans, the colon's built with penile insertion as a happy coincidence. That means bacteria that need washed off before you put it back in me."  
      
    Rex gulps. "R-right...and while I'm doing that, what are you gonna do?"  
      
    "Long as it doesn't bother you, something that'll explicitly make Pyra jealous."  
      
    He raises an eyebrow as he draws to his feet. "What's that supposed to mean?"  
      
    "You'll see when you're done washing up. Get to it, now! Soap and hot water, like, almost boiling!" She waits for Rex to step into the washroom and shut the door before making her next move...  
    

* * *

  
      
    Blasphemy awaited Rex as he finally stepped out of the bathroom, dutifully soaped up and rinsed down per Pneuma's prescription.  
    She'd splayed herself out on the bed, as well you'd expect from someone in a mating mood, but rather than go for a "come hither" or "please be gentle" repose, she was lying as close to flat as a board as possible with her arms stretched out towards the bedposts. Neon red chains of ether ringed the Aegis's wrists and ankles, phasing just enough into the mattress to give the impression she was bound upon it.  
    The last time he'd seen someone in that sort of pose, he was fearing for their life, so the salvager had to ask: "Pneuma, what the hell?"  
      
    The captive Blade winced. "I kinda wanted to add a sense of finality to this, what with it being the last hole left and all, so I...umm...raided my stash of Pyra's memories."  
      
    "...of Tantal."  
      
    "...she was perfectly ready to give it all up then. To stop causing you pain. But a little part of her always wondered if, before she went...she could have a moment at your mercy like this."  
      
    Rex sighed as he climbed onto the side of the bed, making a point of NOT straddling her. "...we had something going so well earlier, now you've gone and lost the plot again."  
      
    "Lost the plot? But this is something we've wanted ever since we were all the same person...people...OK, it's actually up in the air whether I can speak for Mythra, but still-"  
      
    "-But still, that kind of defeats the purpose of me going along with this." He presses a thumb into the palm of her outstretched hand. "I thought, 'sure, we'll go with the roleplay for a bit, see if this is really the way Pneuma wants to go all-in expressing her love'...and it worked, for a while. But going back and trying to personalize your share of your sisters' memories like this...it's kinda morbid. Especially the really traumatic stuff."  
      
    She stares on, letting out a defeated exhale. It wasn't like she had a credible objection to raise.  
      
    "I get where you're coming from, trying to make up for bad experiences and things left unsaid...but some of those memories have to, y'know, stay painful. So we can better appreciate the high points they lead to later on. Like...well, losing you and then saving you."  
      
    "Or losing you, then coming back to you in stages?"  
      
    "Exactly! I think...I think what we all thought was gonna be our last parting really drove home how much we appreciated being together." Rex pantomime-tugs at the chain at her wrist. Either it was selectively corporeal or Pneuma was quite dedicated to maintaining her bound posture. "And then, of course, getting back together again wound that up even more..."  
      
    "Can't argue with that, I guess..." She blows a stray strand of green hair away. "Soooo...this is a no-go, then?"  
      
    "You sound awful disappointed."  
      
    "...I guess I am." Frowning mildly, she wills the shackles to dissolve in puffs of ether. "I really liked seeing that more forceful side of you, and thought introducing a little bondage would fit with the dynamic we had going. But I guess I got too heady and wound up being inconsiderate..."  
      
    "Weeeellllll..." As the ponytailed Blade brings her arms back to rest, Rex scoots in to close the gap to her side. "If it means that much to you, I'm not gonna rule the whole concept out. Let's just...try to avoid the real helpless, lifeless poses like that. First off, I keep flashing back to Malos bragging about you being a 'lifeless husk' after he got through ransacking your...I guess 'self' to repair his Core Crystal."  
      
    Pneuma gulped. "That...that's a rather heavy 'First off.' I don't know if you need a follow-up at that point."  
      
    "Trust me, I've got a good one." He places a hand low against her belly, close to where he'd torn away her easy access panel. "I think what we had going earlier, with the milking play...I think we got awful close to the best possible outcome of this master/slave roleplay. You place your absolute trust in me, but you're still egging me on, pushing me to drive you over the edge--that requires a good bit of latitude you don't have if you're just tied up an' waiting to be rutted. If you still want the chains and such, I think it works out better for both of us if they aren't keeping you strapped to a surface."  
      
    "Well, if I'm not being tied to a bed or a post or whatever, what's at the other end?"  
      
    The salvager thinks on this for a second, hands templed underneath his chin. "Maybe...maybe we ought to be thinkin' less chains and more collars and leashes."  
      
    "What, like leading me around like a dog?" Her tone is catty, but isn't exactly disapproving.  
      
    "I'm thinking more like a Ponio, with you being so tall...and, uh, havin' the ponytail already."[3]  
      
    An intense blush plays across Pneuma's face, seemingly accompanied by steam gathering around (pushing out from?) the edges of her ears. "...Father help me, that sounds so hot. I could have blinders, and turn my shoes into pony boots, and-"  
      
    "Pneuma. You're getting obsessed with form again." Rex's tone is stern, but coming from a place of caring--he emphasizes as much by clasping a hand into hers. "Dial it back a little, OK?"  
      
    "I...I might need your help with that. Rex. Master." The Aegis turns to her Driver, threading her arms around his midsection and pulling him up so he's straddling her. "...the more I start thinking about the pony thing, the less I can bring myself to file it as a cute to-do for later. So I need you to do something to push it out of my head before I get too wrapped up in it."  
      
    "And that is...?"  
      
    She starts tightening her embrace. "...Fuck me senseless, Master. Right here, right now. Give me that long, deep reminder that it's not about some elaborate carrying-on...it's about me being yours. All that matters is me belonging to you, and you using my body until it can't help but accept that."  
      
    Amber eyes harden as Rex smirks. "See, THAT's the woman I'm proud to call my Holy Grail!" He lowers himself, pressing into her slick folds, relishing every little gasp that escapes Pneuma's lips as they're parted and eventually pierced. "That's the girl who aches to call me Master, out of her desire as a woman rather than her obligation as a Blade!"  
      
    He starts thrusting in earnest, and she's reduced to moaning and purring as her body is rocked, her generous breasts bouncing up and down with each pulse and echoing the blissful rumbles in her pussy with every slap back onto her chest. "Mnnn~ Aaaahhh~ Master~"  
      
    "Good girl. And eager, too~" He steals a deep kiss off her pleasure-pursed lips as he buries himself deep inside her, holding it for another three such pulses. "All that matters is being mine, right? Being filled up and stirred up by Master's cock~"  
  
    "Yeeeeessssss~" Green eyes roll backward in Pneuma's head as her hips lift up, spurred by each deep slam to raise her legs up further and further till Rex can catch them and trap her in a mating press. "Please fill me up~ Deep in my slutty chalice~"  
      
    The brunette takes hold of her ankles once it's clear she's having difficulty raising them any higher herself, experimentally pushing them forward towards her head with each thrust hitting max depth. Four inches seems to be as far forward as he can get them before her muscles start to protest, but it's enough to make the Aegis punch-drunk on the faintest tinge of pain intertwining with the pleasure rippling through her loins. "I thought you'd only get off on pain with somethin' like tit torture, but look at you! Smilin' right through me damn near tearin' your legs off!"  
      
    "Stretching for Master feels so gooooood~" She squeals as a white-hot Ether Link erupts from close to where Rex's thrusts keep impacting her cervix, lashing and resonating at his own navel. "I want to cum from Master using meeeeeee~"  
      
    "I guess we're both awful close again, huh?" He intensifies his assault, each hilting pushing Pneuma's legs further back still--he manages to get her feet to about a foot from her head before an ether reverberation starts to betray discomfort, then steadies them around two inches back from that. "And you've been awful tight this whole time, too! A boy can only take so much of this!"  
      
    "I'm going to squeeze out Master's dick milk~ Master's going to fill me with his cuuuuuuum~" She sounds almost worshipful as her vision starts to blur, pleading eyes transfixed on her lover's face.  
      
    "Damn right I am~" Rex's pistoning has become frenetic, his enforcement of the mating press almost as much to keep him shooting straight down her pussy as to keep her stimulated. "I wanna see Pneuma's happy and used pleasure slave face~ So I'm gonna use her till the pleasure starts spilling out her head~"  
      
    All formal sense of time had gone out the window a while ago, but the next few seconds could be punctuated only by the all-encompassing throbbing between either lovebird's legs. This time the white-hot bliss overtook Pneuma's head first, finally overcome by the ceaseless rhythm against her womb. The triumphant contraction wrenched Rex's member close to its base, leaving the Driver no choice but to blast mightily into the depths of his Master Blade's sheath. Spurts even more forceful than the previous two emissions splashed against her core, dotting her still-ongoing orgasm with even more pinpricks of bliss.  
    Before either of them truly came down, their lips practically magnetized together for a kiss, warm breath and wildly sparking ether threatening to encore their shared climax upon their tongues. For as long as they could go without breaking off for air, they let themselves be lost in each other's sensations of the consummation, frothing up the nascent afterglow as they wordlessly savored the last swirling notes of devotion and surrender.  
    

* * *

  
      
    Stillness.  
    Contentment.  
    Then...cool breeze, lush grass, and a bright blue sky without a harsh sun.  
    And finally...snickering?  
    As soon as the sound of something other than themselves fills their ears, Rex and Pneuma jolt apart and scramble to cover their shame. For the Blade, it's as easy as willing her bodysuit bottoms back into existence and unrolling the mesh gathered underneath her breasts till she can pull it up to cover them again. The Driver is...not so lucky, and without a clothes hamper in sight, the best that can be done is the newly-reclothed Aegis tossing a wad of ether in his direction that solidifies around his hips as the shorts of the Master Driver armor.  
      
    "Well, aren't you two adorable~" The voice comes from close to the tree--the two _just know_ it'd have to come from around there for lack of other focal points, but look anyway. Both of Pneuma's sisters are there, smiling--Pyra reclining on the tree proper with a look of contentment, while Mythra stares on at the apparent newcomers like she caught someone raiding the cookie jar. "We had a bet going that Rex 'taking one of us to Elysium' would wind up being both literal and a euphemism, and it looks like we both lost since it happened to you first."  
      
    The ponytailed woman blushes. "H-how long have you two-"  
      
    "Since the blowjob, mainly," Pyra chimes in. "We had a feeling you two were up to something with an attempted midday login, but then it ramped up while we were serving lunch. Had to make like Mythra'd overspiced her share to manage to excuse ourselves, and we've been stuck on cots trying to ride it out ever since."  
      
    "Cor, I didn't think the part where you each feel what the other's feeling would extend to Pneuma, too." Rex looks downcast, his eyes trying to focus away from either of the three Aegises. "And with so many Titans between us, even! It must've really raised some eyebrows seeing you two-"  
      
    "Rex. It's all right." The elder blonde squeezes his hand. "We've got a decent bit of privacy even in the middle of all the tents, and Pyra was able to keep her moaning and panting down to a minimum...more importantly, we can tell you've been taking good care of our little sister, and keeping her out of trouble too."  
      
    "I dunno about that last part...this kind of all happened at the cost of the day's garden work. If Rex is plowing before he's even done weeding-"  
      
    The redhaired Aegis pivots off the tree, taking Pneuma's hands in her own before she can follow in her Driver's footsteps with the apologetics. "I think we can handle the gardening being a bit out of order for a couple of days. And who knows...maybe for an off-harvest year, we can let it grow out a little wild and be a nice pony pasture."  
      
    "Don't tempt me, dammit..." Her cheeks instantly turn a bright grapefruit pink, not too far removed from Pyra's own stockings.  
      
    "C'mon, though~" Mythra puts an arm around her shoulders, trapping her in the middle of an Aegis Sandwich. "We need something to do when we get home to just...relentlessly pamper our little sister. I could brush out your hair till it's super-silky, Rex could lead you about with blinders on-"  
      
    "Oooh, speaking of blinders..." Pyra boops Pneuma's Core Crystal with an index finger, causing her vision to go out of focus briefly. When it rights itself, the ruby-haired sister has produced what looks like a mesh sleeping mask caught between two flat leather earmuffs. "It's just an on-the-fly mockup, but what do you think?"  
      
    Pneuma eyes the mesh warily. It looks to be screen-printed in the same manner as the bust of her bodysuit, complete with the center being dominated by her name rendered in Greek. The Latin below it seems...off, though. " _ut addatur gratia capiti tuo et torques collo tuo_...we're going backwards in Proverbs now for cheeky passphrases?"  
      
    "1:9 sounds perfect for you, though." Mythra taps at the horn in the green-haired girl's headband. "There's the ornament of grace upon your head...and the chains about your neck are the ones you love feeling Rex yank when he makes you his woman. And you find honor in all of it, as well you should being with a guy with such an incredibly big heart."  
      
    The lone male in the dreamscape finally sees a chance to pipe up again. "So...you're not worried or anything? About her throwin' herself too deep into this to find validation?"  
      
    Pyra lets out a sputtering laugh. "C'mon, Rex. For you, keeping us on the straight and narrow and spoiling us rotten are basically one and the same."  
      
    "...true that, I guess." The elder Aegises release Pneuma from their embrace, and the Master Driver takes her into his own. "...and no headaches for you two, either, I hope?"  
      
    "Call it another posthumous curveball Father threw us. Proverbs 1:9 wasn't our idea of a new passphrase, but Pneuma's 4:18 was being marked as a deprecated token. That ought to be fixed now so she doesn't wake up command line-brained anymore...and there's enough fuzzy logic room for in case she still wants the pleasure rush from confirming your presence visually."  
      
    "That's a relief...just, don't go writing any weird self-hypnotic triggers before you tell me what they are, OK?"  
      
    "Of course..." She looks back at her sisters, emerald eyes almost pleading. They give a knowing nod, and her chest flutters as she turns once more to her... "...Master."  
      
    Their embrace tightens, and the crisp air of Elysium gives way to the warmth of summer heat and young love. The sterile rolling hills of the dreamscape seem to slough off of reality as the pair are deposited back on the full-size bed in Fonsett. Not that it's given any notice as Rex and Pneuma are quite content to lose themselves in each other's eyes.  
    After untold heartbeats, fatigue makes her the first to blink.  
    She keeps her eyes fluttered shut, and desire makes her lips purse in readiness for a kiss.  
    He accepts, and her Master makes her lost no longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1]Am I contradicting Afterlife Ch.3 by saying Pneuma has no route to host back to Rhadamantus? It's a coinflip, really. But at the very least, it's not where it's expected to be in orbit, and she certainly isn't where the Trinity Processors are physically expected to be any longer. We ultimately go on assuming her new passphrase is a continuation of shenanigans first brought into play with "Kairos" being a thing, though.
> 
> [2]The tale of Thassaly, naturally, is an extrapolation of the need for Alrest to have some kind of "cruelty in labor practices and chattel slavery in general is bad, m'kay" parable without the baggage of infidelity to the Abrahamic equivalents. From an etymology standpoint, the rhyme with "Vassalage" and "Thessaly" was paramount, with parallels to the Slavic and Ottoman occupation of the latter entirely unintended. Titan Cycles, similarly, are a timekeeping fiction to keep the Rhadamantus printouts from Afterlife Ch.3 accurate without spilling into the millions of years AD; sharing an acronym with Xenosaga's "Transcend Christ" calendar is an entirely intended bonus.
> 
> [3]Ponio mobs exist in only one place in XC2 (the Cargo Transportation Zone), but I'm damn glad they do because it means I don't have to figure out an alternate local etymology for ponyplay and attendant portions of the fetish.


	2. Orientation Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last outlying member of the harem is introduced to Pneuma's pervy little secret (among others) over wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are, diverging into a proper parallel Pneuma Lives headcanon that more or less splits off from Afterlife at the Ch.7/8 break and does its own thing. Not that I won't be looking back to it for inspiration, mind--case in point, this retread of the "Girl's Talk Over Wine" framing device.
> 
> Speaking of "things stolen from other fanfics," I guess we're treating both chapters of JLDavenport's "A Treatise on Proper Care and Maintenance for Weapons" as a broad-stroke foundational canon now, with splashes of Tessler's "Alrest Shorts" Ch.3 mixed in.
> 
> Those of you expecting another smutty chapter will have to be patient for a bit.

     She was starting to appreciate the taste of red wine.  
     She couldn't go out of the way to name every last little fruity or nutty note in the stuff--she told herself it had less to do with reining in her impulse to overanalyze things, and more to do with lack of formal training as a sommelier--and it always just seemed to be her and her elder sister having a glass each after dinner. But after the first couple of nights/glasses, it stopped feeling obligatory, and a couple after that, it started to be kinda fun.  
      Besides, the alternative was Mythra drinking alone, and that just sounded like a tragedy waiting to happen.

     "So. There's three of you now, huh." At least even if Pneuma weren't keeping the elder Aegis company this evening, she wouldn't be drinking unsupervised. The end of Nia's circuitous rounds as a freelance medic/Garfont Mercenaries squad supervisor/record-straightener for accounts of Rex and friends' journey to Elysium (more often than not, performing all three duties in the span of a week's stay in a given town) had coincided with the end of Pyra and Mythra's journey to help reorient and resettle another refugee enclave (twenty tents broken down from a starting count of 45, all thankfully from successful care and work placement negotiations), and all three had returned home the previous morning on the weekly direct line from Argentum.  
      All told, it seemed she was taking the news of the green-haired Aegis's existence rather well, giving her a trademark amused grin following a sip of Gormotti Honeytea. "You been keeping Rex busy, I take it?"

     "Oh, she's been doing her part~" The blonde woman was only a third of the way into her first glass, but that seemed to be enough tonight to crank up the innuendo. "I'm not about to say he's being left in her capable hands yet, but with some more experience..."

     "Mythra, is this...really something you ought to just blurt out?" The ponytailed girl's cheeks were almost as red as her untouched shiraz.

     "C'mon, it's Nia. You know she can take it. Hell, she took Rex's first."

     Pneuma's eyes boggle. "Wha...but how...when was-"

     The jumpsuited lady gulped. "While you were...indisposed. The first time...after Tantal."

     Mythra reaches across the corner of the table to give Pneuma's hand a reassuring squeeze. "Pyra and I didn't know either, till our first time a ways after the World Tree fell. But you know that weird ripple about two-thirds of the way through that blank space in our memories there?"

     The green-haired Blade shuts her eyes briefly as she rewinds through her inherited memories. The point her sister mentioned wasn't occupied by an image (like so many other memories) so much as by a vague warmth in the middle of a dark void. "So this little bit of heat and emotion was..."

     "Diluted from distance and Malos's damage, but definitely sent back through Rex's half of the Core Crystal."

     "By the two of them-"  
      Nia nods in the affirmative. Pneuma shoots her a smile. "...I guess the only thing I can really say is...thank you."

     Gormotti ears twitch in surprise. "Come again?"

     "You two pulsing your teenage heat through his Core Crystal was probably the first thing that re-established our sense of self after Malos burnt so much of it out. We may not have had any faith in ourselves at that point, let alone regained control of our body...but the fact that Pyra and Mythra could start thinking as individuals and a 'we' by the time you caught up to them made a world of difference."

     "So, the Master Driver, and you bein' a thing...you're sayin' that was all jump-started from me and Rex rutting?"

     "Close enough to truth for me." The blonde Aegis takes a pensive sip. "Just accept her thanks before she starts fawning over you."

     "Too late," her sister snickers after swirling the faintest bit of vintage on her lips. She taps at her Core Crystal to dismiss the harder bits of her armor, slouching forward to fix Nia in her vision. "Anyone who loves Rex that much, I seem to love close to the same."

     A silver eyebrow cocks. "You comin' on to me?"

     "Pneuma's never been an amorous drunk, but I guess as of a couple days ago she's taken up being an amorous _everything_."

     The ponytailed Blade makes a point of pushing her glass till it sits just in front of her cleavage before taking another sip. "You said I needed a hobby, though."

     "Flirting with people isn't a hobby!" Mythra protests.

     "It's an art form. I'm getting into art."

     "You've never even met Kora face-to-face and she's already a bad influence on you..."

     "Nah, this isn't Kora." Nia gives the younger Aegis a once-over as her ears flit about. "More like a weird inversion of Sheba, with just enough Praxis to keep her bouncing around."

     "See, Nia gets me!"

     "Yeah, but if you're looking for that to translate to her WANTING you, that's only going to end in-"

     Mythra's interrupted by a white sleeve falling on her arm to go with a squeeze at her wrist. Nia seems to have finally let her hair down, and her ears up, and all the other little changes that come with shifting into her Blade form. "...let her 'ave this, all right? I thought this whole drinks-before-bed thing was about loosening up, letting our true selves out. An' I haven't seen any of Pneuma's that I wanna say 'no' to."

     "...fine, knock yourself out." The elder sister shrugs before knocking back a third of her glass. "You get skeeved out by her little complex, though, it's on you."

     "Hmph. You think I'm not good with _complexes_..." Nia rolls her eyes while gesturing to the ruby streaks in her Core Crystal, before turning to address Pneuma directly. "You're like, bits and bobs of Mythra and Pyra while still being your own person, yeah?"  
      She nods. "Then any weird you think you are, it's nothing I 'aven't seen in either of them first."

     "Not even...saying weird stuff in bed?" Green eyes stare half-pleading at the cat-eared Flesh Eater.

     "Define weird."

     "I could wind up calling you My Lad-"

     Pneuma is interrupted by her older sister sputtering with laughter. "Nope. Noooooooope. You're not calling her that. We're not making Nia think she's having a roll in the hay with a younger, girlier Dromarch."

     Nia's cheeks redden at the image as the younger Aegis resumes. "Fine, fine, let's...let's not have that. I guess...I guess I'll just wind up settling for Master or Mistress or something."

     "...oh, it's one of THOSE complexes." The silver-haired guest's eyes brighten as she regains her composure. "Been readin' some of the saucier penny dreadfuls from Adenine's stash, have we?"

     "No...Rex told me they were a thing, though. Says I shouldn't call myself anything really degrading out of them."

     "Sharp as ever, the lad is." Nia swirls some more tea in her cheeks before continuing. "He knows you got a lot of Pyra's inclination to love really deeply, and he doesn't want to link it to any kind of disrespect for yourself."

     "That's definitely good to keep in mind," Mythra interjects, "but I keep wondering if Pneuma's little fantasy isn't entirely rooted in stuff she inherited from us. I mean, Pyra and I will want to get really close with Rex once in a while, but we don't go all-in with the master/servant thing."

     "Don't knock it till you've tried it." Pneuma shoots her sister a flirty smile. "It's fun. Helps with your focus, too."

     "Yeah, because you tune the whole rest of the world out till you become a simple but messy Input/Output switch."

     "Well, never mind that that's true of any other rutting 'side getting yourself off. Hell, even that too." The Flesh Eater's sleeves flop onto the table as she crosses her arms in a matter-of-fact pout.

     "I know, I know..." The blonde Aegis growls. "It's just...we first heard of this from it being an old-world, Trinity Processor thing. A remedy for pain Pyra and I didn't even know she had. I'm trying my hardest not to judge, but I don't want her to fall so deep into it she's just trading one unhealthy fixation for another."

     "Well, it's not even been a whole week since I discovered those feelings wanted to express THAT way...and given they're so incredibly personal I'd only ever want to let them out around the four of you, that's a pretty effective limiter, right?"

      "I guess...long as we get you out of the nest often enough that you're not spending all your time crushing on any of us." Mythra shoots a wry smile back at her sister. "Oh, and taking up salvaging or dive support is cheating. Probably break Rex's heart if he found you made yourself obligated to be that close to him."

     "...she could be Garfont's area coordinator for Leftheria or something?" Nia shrugs. "Yew and Zuo've been swamped sending teams into the new continent; it'd be nice to have someone more familiar with the old Titans keepin' a lid on things homeward."

     "That could probably work." Pneuma perks up...only to look a little crestfallen. "...long as it doesn't involve really heavy combat."

     "Well, y'know, it's mercenary work-"

     "No, not that I've lost my taste for it or anything, it's just..." She lets out an anxious breath. "...a couple of weeks ago, Rex and I went out to Godsford Isle looking for wilder produce, the local Aligo scented us...we managed to put them down, but just using Star Burst left me winded. Turns out without the Conduit, I can only manage about 7% of my expected combat ether throughput--the more elaborate Specials where I'm bombarding enemies with multiple simultaneous attack possibilities are clearly out of the question.  
      "I've heard the stories about you and the others going through Spirit Crucible Elpys, and I have Mythra and Pyra's memories of helping out Herald down there...but like, where that ether cutoff feels like crushing weight and suction, mine feels more like emptiness in my core. A hole in my chest where all the ether I could be using to protect Rex and the others should be, but isn't."

     Mythra finds herself having to bite back a catty remark about how you'd never tell, given Pneuma's non-combat ether use. "You've...you've gotta tell us these things when they come up, you know? Especially something like this, where it could screw up a lot more than the headache thing could."

     "I know, and I spent like a week feeling eaten up inside from thinking of the second-order consequences...but knowing there isn't a fix somewhere in the best of Alrest's technology or whatever World Tree wreckage people can still reach..."

     "...Well, maybe it's a sign that you should learn to do more with less. You're already living with two case studies." Nia lets some droplets of water ether dance on her fingertips and drop into her dwindling tea as her focus shifts from one Aegis to the other. "Mythra, when you made Pyra...about how much of your assumed total power did you expect her to wield? Ten, fifteen percent?"

     "Closer to ten, I'd say? I wasn't...in a good place to be thinking exact numbers back then."

     "And beyond that, the only really Aegis-y thing you depend on yourself is Siren, right? And even then, verrrrrrrry situationally."

     "Honestly..." The blonde Blade knocks back the last of her glass. "...it's a small miracle I can even still sense Siren up there. Where's it even getting power? I can't tell if it can still do anything combat-wise running on solar."

     "Broader point is, the Conduit may have made your element shifting fast and easy when you two were in the same body, but you weren't truly USING its power unless you were fused into the original Pneuma..." The Flesh Eater shivers slightly just after finishing her sentence. "...no offense meant to present company, of course."

     "None taken."

     Pneuma's answer sounds inattentive, and her eyes look glassy as they gaze back at her last fifth of wine. Mythra picks up on both like a ravenous Ansel. "Well, Nia, now you've done it."

     "Done what?"

     "Set her off on over-romanticizing it."

     "Romanticizing what? Being a successor? A clone?"

     Glazed-over green eyes and a flirty smile tilt Nia's way. "I'm not going to say it explains so much that it HAS to be true...but it sounds nice."

     "You...you're _turned on_ by the idea?"

     "Well, it's not like it makes me any less real...and Pyra and Mythra are such nice people for me to be a theoretical clone of." She scoots her chair closer to her elder sister's, making a show of enough jerky vertical movement to make her chest bounce in Nia's vision.

     "Aaaaaand welcome to the dark side of Pneuma's fetish." Mythra scoots her sister's wine glass toward her own, mostly to cut her off but also to entertain the instinct that she'll shortly need it herself. "It's not just master/servant or master/slave for her. It's...any frame of reference where me and Pyra and Rex are these perfect little people, and she's put on this earth to be their reflection and/or their VIP prostitute."

     "But you three ARE this perfect, adorable little family," Nia protests. "And with a new little one to look after now, even!"

     "You're welcome to join us too, y'know." Pneuma snaps out of her self-induced trance just briefly enough to extend the offer without any perverted pretense.

     "I know, I know, it's just...Mabon's kids offered me a sweetheart lease on his old flat in Torigoth a couple months back. Said the town center was missin' something without Vess makin' dumplings out back. And it didn't feel right to take 'em up on it then just flip it into a Garfont FOB..."

     "Well," Mythra deflates, glad to have something more innocent to talk about. "At least you've got an address now that isn't 'On The Run'."

     "And plenty of guest room, too...Dromarch and I'll need it, whenever you lot start getting tired of the sleepy seaside life."

     "You aren't in a hurry to get back to the shade trees and city air, though, are you?" The blonde can feel her dazed sister start to lean into her side.

     "Even if I were, my other Blades don't seem to want to allow it. Godfrey insisted I do something to touch base with you, and 'fore I could say no, Crosette got together with Vess and the Production Team and said they'd literally spend a month baking me out of house and home if that was what it took to pay you a visit."

     The wobbly smile returns to Pneuma's face. "A month, huh..."

     "If it's what it takes for their little mutiny to run its course..." Silver ponytails swish about as Nia crosses her arms. "Then yeah. I guess I'm yours for the next month."

     "...that's my line..."

     Mythra rolls her eyes. "Please don't start, Pneuma. At least not till after we've gotten the pull-out bed out."

     "She's sleeping down here? Alone?"

     "The four of us barely fit in Rex's bed all at once-" The elder Aegis is interrupted by Nia giggling. "...dammit, I can't believe you walked me into that one."

     "Well, if that's the way it's gonna be, then I'm staying down here with Nia tonight. What happens, happens, and what doesn't happen...well, let's just say I've grown accustomed lately to not having my sheets stolen."

     "Oh, I wouldn't get your hopes up..." The Flesh Eater smirks. "It's awful warm this time of year...probably all I'll wind up needing is the cool night air and a frisky kitty concubine in my arms~"

     Mythra can practically feel her sister's heart rate shoot up another five beats per minute. "Father above, you're provoking her on purpose now."

     "She gets horny. You get bullied. It's a win-win."

     She slammed down her sister's leftover wine. It was about to become a long month.


	3. Rites of the Penitents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They sought penance, and found it in the depths and in each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUDDEN SWERVE TIME LET'S GO. Woke up with most of the outline to this rushing into my head one day, and figured "sure, let's space out the planned setpieces a bit with some lewd and not-so-lewd Heart-to-Hearts throughout the postgame world."
> 
> Then my muse ran off when I needed a hand writing the middle of the thing, probably to moonlight for Vargras ("Brushies" seems to echo a lot of my own sentiments for Nia's role in the OT4/OT5) and only managed to get back on board to push a Valentine's Day/middle of Femslash February release.
> 
> In case it isn't obvious, I chose the second H2H response during "Indomitable Will."

    She wasn't entirely sure what compelled her to delve into Spirit Crucible Elpys that day, but she was quite thankful she knew a shortcut.  
    Well, someone who could serve as a shortcut, at least. After a morning spent parrying Azurda's protests that traversing the catacomb alone was a fool's errand--he'd been quite put off by the reminder that he'd never been so gracious as to give a half-millennium's would-be excavators and grave robbers such warnings before the fact--the Titan acceded to splitting the difference and depositing Pneuma right before the Vault of Heroes after a short ride beneath the waves, tucked into his cheek. She was given two conditions for such charity: return promptly for pickup at 18:00, and bring home or at least make contact with another Blade given to making such expeditions as of late.  
    So it was that, given a clear shot to the Third Aegis Sword's resting place and what remnants therein echoed through the ages, she turned right around and made her way up through the myriad pillars suspended in the inky void, darting along crossways and swerving around columns as if she were one of the many Marrins and Aspids coiling about overhead.  
      
    She finds her quarry just beneath the summit of her climb, seated in a lotus position before the ancient monolith marking the start of the final descent to the last seal. Before the ponytailed Aegis can call to her, though, the frost-haired woman speaks. "...the Aegis. Or one of them. To what do I owe the pleasure?"  
      
    "Dromarch, so I'm told. Azurda says he's helping play park ranger on the upper levels while Nia's in town."  
      
    The meditator snorts. "Must I lecture you a third time on not making light of our work here?"  
      
    "N-no! Once is good! Zero...maybe...even better?"  
      
    "...the local gossip is true, then." She finally opens her eyes and draws to standing height, steely blue eyes locking onto Pneuma's green. "Rex has been blessed with one of every incarnation of the Aegis, but the new one's...a little out of sync."  
      
    "Understatement of the year, Perun." The Aegis grumbles. "I'm a year late coming back to Rex, my combat capability's half in the gutter, and the whole last week has been a rollercoaster of emotions coming from places it's morally frowned-upon them coming from."  
      
    "...you came alone, despite that one in the middle. There are safer places for you to vent your frustrations, you know."  
      
    "I could say the same to you. All kinds of quiet places throughout Alrest to meditate on the last year's worth of received wisdom about the world, or about the Aegis War, or whatever...and yet to hear it from Azurda, you're basically here for days on end unless Garfont needs you for something."  
      
    The ice Blade shrugs. "There's a certain...authenticity to this place that would be lacking in, say, Tantal."  
      
    "Pfft, authenticity." Pneuma rolls her eyes. "You'd just rather feel the algae in this place sucking out your ether instead of being wrapped in an Ether Net."  
      
    "I've spoken at length about this to basically the whole group: my choice to endure this trial does not betray some...some kind of perversion!"  
      
    "Maybe it doesn't. But it speaks to the same kind of ritual behind most perversions." She leans against the side of the Stele of Judgment, careful not to accidentally press upon some plaque or another on the verge of crumbling. "You're not getting off on it, but it's fulfilling some kind of need for you."  
      
    Perun grumbles. Her glittery green guest is surprisingly on the money. "...is this the rumored Insufferable Nerd Pneuma, about to ride that train of thought off a Titan's shoulder?"  
      
    "Worse; it's Insufferable Perv Pneuma trying to ride it clean into the Titan's clutch."  
      
    "If you're going to play at being a suitor, you should at least offer dinner and a show."  
      
    "Done and done." The Aegis cocks her head, trying to make her ponytail bat at Perun's own ponytwins. It barely manages to graze her abs, but that ginger touch is somehow enough to make the ice Blade's E-cup bust wobble side-to-side in her top. "How's Meatball Pot-au-Feu at the Aegishold[1] at 18:45 and drinks with Mythra afterward sound?"  
      
    "...it's always perfection with you Aegises, isn't it?"  
      
    "Well, you can take the dinner date, or I can declare it Master Blade's Orders and compel your attendance."  
      
    The faintest bit of a chuckle puffs into Perun's cheeks. "You've barely been back from death for a month, are the worst-caught-up on current affairs of any Blade in Aegis Company's purview, spent the last five minutes admitting to several things unbecoming of a legendary Blade from the very seat of the Architect...and you want to pull rank on me?"  
      
    "I want you to come up for air, Perun. People are worried for you--friends, squadmates, certainly your Driver. At the very least, let 'em know you're not just putting yourself at risk down here for the sake of making them anticipate you getting hurt...and get a decent meal and a good night's rest, too."  
      
    She's silent for a bit, mulling it over. "...18:45, you said?"  
      
    "Azurda will come back up from the Portal of the Hero Salvage Point at the top of the hour. Bit of a bumpy ride, but should save us from some needless wading through acid."  
      
    "Hm. We still have a couple hours yet, then."  
      
    "Fair enough." Pneuma slouches down, sitting on her butt with her legs drawn in. "So...apart from admiring the remnants of Tornan architecture and testing your ability to endure in extreme environments, what _does_ bring you down here for such long sabbaticals?"  
      
    "Well, you were awfully on point when you said it was fulfilling a need for me, so I guess I at least owe you a clarification..." Fingers the color and gloss of fine choclit trace along one of the stele's inscriptions. "Subjecting myself to this catacomb's ether-draining properties...it's my own little way of giving back to nature."  
      
    "So by nurturing the algae down here..."  
      
    "...indeed. Our quest for Elysium upset quite a few ecosystems, took an awful lot of animal lives, and wasted so much of the remains of the dead...to say nothing of the humans we cut down because they coveted the Aegis and took up arms to claim it, or whatever other plans of theirs drove them to brandish arms in our path."  
      
    "Penance, then...I can relate, in my own weird way."  
      
    "Oh? Do tell." Perun sets down, her pose mirroring Pneuma's own except for one leg left outstretched, as if daring the Aegis to peek straight down her skirt. "For all of this lifetime, and surely three or four before, I've believed the Aegis to be above such frail things as guilt."  
      
    "You were awakened awful late to Pyra's pity party[2], I'm afraid...but this is about my hang-ups, not hers. Me being such a little know-it-all, reading ahead into other people's intentions...it's gotta be an ironic punishment. I didn't...properly optimize our escape plan, when the World Tree started collapsing. I didn't have the forethought to set the Aion self-destruct and then just teleport back to the group like I was executing Radiant Flare. And I spent too much time right at the end...just staring at Rex across that bridge. Begging him to take the hint, to let me go, without the heart to at least say the words till it was long past too late for us to have it both ways.  
    "I ran out the clock on him...basically just for poetry's sake. And the price for that is me coming back to his side a year late, as a sharded-off patchwork of a self with a defective weapon and a sack of volatile hormones ten degrees off from critical mass."  
      
    The choclit-skinned lancer stays her response for a second, to let Pneuma fight back a sniffle. "You feel you failed Rex, and you're trying to make it up to him...in your own weird way."  
      
    "...yeah. And if my sword can't do the job, and I still haven't figured out a trade...well, all I've got after that is the one option."  
      
    "If you feel you can forgive yourself in that way, more power to you..."  
      
    There's a pregnant pause as the green-haired Blade bites back her bewilderment. "That's...I wouldn't say supportive, but at the same time I also wasn't expecting you to be so indifferent. I thought you'd start carrying on about, well, carrying out the act with some motive other than love."  
      
    Perun scoffs. "Are you an Aegis, Pneuma?"  
      
    "The hell kind of question is that? Of course I am!"  
      
    "The commonality between all Aegises currently walking this earth is that they love Rex, for reasons that go far beyond being Driver and Blade...or even Master Driver and Master Blade. Needless to say, there is no loveless sex for me to hector you about."  
      
    Pneuma's head retreats below her raised knees, but it's not enough to muffle her sputtering laughter.  
      
    The ice Blade can't help but sport a smirk herself. "...so this is the game, huh? Stringing me along with your melodrama till you can get me to speak of bedroom antics with a straight face?"  
      
    "What? No, no, it's...OK, it's a little of that, yeah. But it's mostly hilarious coming off everyone giving me a hard time for the same kind of deadpan delivery when talking about romance, or mental illness, or old world stuff..."  
      
    "...you're not jealous, are you?"  
      
    "If I were jealous, I'd be wearing earrings made out of Poppi's voice synthesizer."  
      
    Perun finds herself scooting closer to the Aegis, chest wobbling on the wrong axis as she goes. "So it's more about the subject matter, then."  
      
    "Yeah...maybe in the same way, all this has been me trying to make up for a sloppy first impression, too. Going off about my sisters and Rex being a deceptively fragile family unit, but also patching up a lot of the stresses and traumas by, well, coalescing into a family unit."  
      
    "A family unit you're a part of, too. In spite of any shortcomings on your part, real or perceived."  
      
    Pneuma tilts her head back, sighing. "I keep having to be reminded of that, even as things are starting to settle into a proper routine..."  
      
    "The same family you feel a degree removed from, you'd drag me kicking and screaming to share dinner with...I should've suspected from your constantly repolarizing ether that there were still more contradictions tugging at you."  
      
    "Still more after my ether hangups and my family hangups, huh? What else you got?"  
      
    The smile returns to the frost-haired woman's lips, more intense than ever. "I see a young woman tormented by her taboo tastes in affection. She wants to express her love with hugs and kisses and heartfelt advice, but also to receive it in the form of teases and manhandling and objectifying whispers."  
      
    "Hey, all I've admitted to so far is being a pervert in general. Who's been feeding you notes?"  
      
    "No one. You just smell like the exact opposite of T-elos."  
      
    Pneuma's eyes go wide alongside her nostrils as she frantically sniffs. "I'm not smelling anything...showered this morning, same as always...Father, is it something I picked up riding in Azurda's mouth?"  
      
    "Fresher still than that. The most minute little something leaked out when we were talking penance a couple of minutes ago. Hardly enough to escape your person, let alone be sucked up by the Elpys algae, but enough to betray a very specific spark of excitement."  
    Perun rises. Pneuma does not follow, eyes transfixed on the white-and-blue wreathed choclit beauty towering over her. "Absolution through carnal surrender...it speaks to you in light of all the ways your mere existence seems to upset the natural order of things. To truly deserve the flesh you are given, you feel compelled to continually offer it in the basest of covenants. Am I going off in the wrong poetic direction, or is this all accurate?"  
      
    "I...I've felt all these things in the last few days. And I'm starting to feel them again now."  
      
    "Does it scare you, feeling these urges so far from home?"  
      
    "A little..." The Aegis stretches a gloved hand upward. "...but I still want to accept them."  
      
    The lancer daintily takes the offered hand, tugging just enough to urge Pneuma to stand. "To give yourself over to them, you mean."  
      
    Emerald eyes shut tight as she takes a deep breath. "...Please."  
      
    "Hm?"  
      
    "Please...let me feel loved. MAKE me feel loved. In my heart, and in my chest, and between my legs, and with my arms held behind my back so I can't resist..." She grabs one of her own wrists behind her butt, as if to demonstrate.  
      
    "...Master Blade's Orders?"  
      
    "No...just as one penitent asking a favor of another."  
      
    Perun leans in, dropping her voice to a husky whisper. "...very well. If you wish to repent for a reckless death, you will be made to succumb to the sensations of life."  
      
    "...th-thank you..."  
      
    "Now...forward, as you are, to the Vault of Heroes. I would rather not have you fall into the abyss when I drive you over the edge."  
      
    On the ice Blade's command, Pneuma pivots on her heels and coolly begins the descent back to her own entry to the catacomb, hands still poised behind her back and awaiting a proper binding. At every other column they round, she stops, tilting herself to project her assets out, daring Perun to goad her back on the path with a sharp rap on her rubber-lined buttocks.  
    Her Mistress (they dare not speak of it, or rather need not) complies, similarly wordlessly but for a couple bends in the middle of the traverse where the spanking is followed by a soft coo of "Good girl." By the time they make it to the Third Sword's resting place, their understanding of each other is milliseconds short of truly automatic.  
    

* * *

  
    Green eyes go wide as she realizes exactly how far forward she's being led. "R-right on the dais?"  
      
    "Why not? It's not like Addam still haunts this place...though perhaps if he still did, maybe he'd appreciate the show."[3]  
      
    The Aegis starts up the last set of steps with some trepidation. "Please...just don't. It's hard enough sorting out that era from both propagandized histories and Mythra's own amber-tinted accounts, I don't need it killing... _this_ , too."  
      
    "All right, all right..." Perun trails after as she's been for the last few minutes, giving her guest a brief tug on the wrist once they've both advanced close to the Third Sword's pedestal. "...of course, right here would be the best break in the ether-sapping effect. Keep your hands close, please."  
      
    "Hm?" Pneuma re-centers her wrists just above her butt, heart racing with intrigue. A faint crackle in her ears blossoms into a chilling jolt into the palms of her hands, spreading virulently until it turns into an oppressive numbness from her elbows down. An attempt to tug them apart proves futile--her lower arms are presently encased in what feels like a centimeter-thick wedge of ice! "Perun? This seems...a little extreme..."  
      
    "Oh? And after all I heard about you being an extreme lover..."  
      
    "...OK, I guess that's on me." What warmth is lost in her arms rushes to her flushed cheeks. "I mean...I asked for this, after all."  
      
    "That you did." A choclit finger traces across the Aegis's cheek, drawing upward and against the corner of her mouth as if to dare the bound woman to suckle it. "So now you're stuck in a position where whatever someone were to do to you, you couldn't resist, legendary might be damned...question is, what exactly do you want done to you?"  
      
    "I..." Something grinds to a halt in Pneuma's head, embarrassment stopping her from a no doubt vulgar vocalization of what she's anticipating right now. "...if you did THIS..." She wobbles her frozen arms. "...you should remember the rest."  
      
    "Perhaps I do...but we are past the point where coy poetry remains sufficient. Where has the Distressingly Forthcoming Pneuma gone off to, hmm?" Perun's fingers glide under the folds of her captive's popped double collar, eliciting a gasp.  
      
    "Ah~" The little trickles of ice ether onto her bare neck elicit almost as much fear as excitement. "P-please...keep touching me..."  
      
    "Oh, I intend to...but your armor is quite adamant about staying in the way. It's almost like a salvaging suit, with interlocking everything and no way to get you free from the outside."  
      
    The Aegis gulps as her partner's hand slips free from her collar. "I don't...have to take everything off for us to keep going like this."  
      
    "Do tell~"  
      
    "My chest armor. Lift it up about a centimeter, then pull it forward." The ice Blade slips in front of Pneuma to comply, finding the length of armor plate in question sliding super-smoothly, hardly even squeaking from rubbing against any perceivable catch in her main bodysuit...and giving her breasts a tantalizing push upwards before finally being dislodged from its rest at their fore.  
      
    "Well, this is already quite an improvement."  
      
    "Why stop there?" Emerald eyes meet frosty blues, trying to command and plead at once. "Undo the hook catch just below my Core Crystal. Expose me."  
      
    Perun's hands feel their way up the Aegis's mesh-covered chest--clearly not even waiting to cast away the fabric before salaciously kneading the impressive bulbs--eventually worming a couple of fingernails into the peak of her cleavage to pop the catch in question, peeling down the once-elasticated sheet to bring every contour of her bust into full view. "...I haven't even started working ether into your nipples and they're so stiff...you're getting awfully worked up from being forcibly undressed."  
      
    "Please don't stop~" The captive's hips buck forward. "One adhesive strip, that's all that's left..."  
      
    She nods, ponytwins bobbing, as her fingertips tease the edge of the rubberized sanitary access strip away from its flush position against Pneuma's mons. The supple choclit digits are slower, more deliberate at the task of peeling it off than the Master Driver had been scarcely a week ago, pausing at the halfway mark to force her to sense the catacomb's air against her freshly exposed pussy lips. Once the whole of it was cast aside... "...I'm starting to see the appeal of this position. Hardly naked in the proper sense, but you've gone from Sensible to Submissive in all of a minute."  
      
    "I was surprised too, the first time...but it's strangely comforting."  
      
    That earns her a look. "I can imagine being turned on by the idea you can be exposed like this so quickly...but comforted?"  
      
    "Well, it's that much faster that I can please...well..."  
      
    "...a Master or Mistress."  
    Pneuma nods.  
    "Just specific ones, or are you accepting that in the abstract?"  
      
    "I haven't got much of a choice in my current position...but somehow being wrangled into it helps me make peace with it."  
      
    Perun rolls her eyes as she lays a hand on the glowing cross inset at the Aegis's navel, smoothing her way toward the verdant patch of pubes revealed by the compromised crotch seam. "I'm just digging myself a deeper hole trying to understand the ways of an Aegis, evidently. Better we just...keep on like this."  
      
    "Please~"  
      
    "Of course. I'll keep touching you..." Choclit fingertips run through Pneuma's follicles, both above her groin and around the base of her ponytail root. "I'll keep teasing you...keep using you like you've clearly been aching to be used every waking moment."  
      
    The green-haired girl finds herself unable to respond with more than a needy moan as waves of ice ether pulse against her head and her loins. Numbness and soporific mental fog threaten to make her pass out in the ice Blade's arms, only for her to jolt awake as her nerves suddenly become hyper-aware of every molecule of air and ether and fabric dancing on her skin.  
      
    "You're awful receptive to this~" Perun coos as her fingers slip back above the tufts of green hair. "I have to tone it down to keep from actually causing a brain freeze, but doing so is more a matter of tugging away from you than of modulating myself. Is it the absence of the Conduit making you so voracious?"  
      
    "I..." The fog thins out enough for Pneuma to find her voice once more. "I wouldn't doubt it."  
      
    "...would you like more?"  
      
    "Yes...and not just as particles, if you can manage."  
      
    "I can't make it super-fine and durable like Dahlia's work, especially working against these conditions-"  
      
    Pneuma tips forward, leaning against the ice Blade's bust. "It's all right. It has to melt or dissolve before Gramps picks us up, anyway...unless you're up for seeing what it takes to give a Titan his size a heart attack."  
      
    "Well, you're being a rather naughty girl all of a sudden...maybe I should leave it out of your hands what you get and when."  
      
    "Is that a punishment, or a challenge?"  
      
    "Yes."  
    The grin on those choclit lips is the last thing the Aegis can comprehend before twin bolts of frosty white shoot through her nipples and up toward her Core Crystal, blooming across the measure of her heaving chest like so many aftershocks. Her third-most-sensitive patches of flesh alight with oxymoronic impulses to harden amidst the chilling ether and to soften and release the same as it condensed into the material plane, leaving her briefly cross-eyed and more momentarily pained by a need for release.  
    "I'd have obliged you straight away if you hadn't been so eager to cause mischief...but now that you've chosen the hard way, we might have a little more fun. What I've just done to you is an ice ether variant of one of Kora's bawdy after-party tricks. At my command, all the ether I've just pumped into your breasts will realign into Ecstacy Icicles, driving back out of your body in an orderly and orgasmic induced lactation...that is, _if_ you can convince me to send that signal before you heedlessly absorb it all."  
      
    Pneuma gulps. "I-I'll do anything~"  
      
    Pleading emerald eyes meet cruel sapphires. "You'll do anything *for what*?"  
      
    "I'll do anything...to cum from having Mistress's ether squeezed out of my tits~" Whatever pride the green-haired Blade had grasped at prior to the latest game-changer in her predicament evaporated, and she wouldn't miss it anytime soon.  
      
    "Mistress of the Master Blade...I like the sound of that. Give my regards to whoever takes up the position permanently..." As Perun speaks, she shimmies down her skirt, the icicle-shaped coattails clattering against brick as she reveals the surprisingly high cut of her bodice. "For now, though, get on your knees. I don't show off like this often, so you had better express your gratitude."  
      
    Pneuma sinks down, thankful for once that she hadn't willed away the full measure of her armor beforehand - not having kneepads would be a real mood-killer right now. It'd at least steal focus from the sight her eyes were drinking in right now: the ice Blade's cotton blue midriff tapering down into a silky white strip presently besieged by dampness. The faint waft of ether and body oils alone would be enough to keep her worked up, but framed as the panty bottom was against those slender choclit thighs with the pale blue ether lines playing at being stocking garters... "...Mistress is so beautiful..."  
      
    "I thought you'd like it~" A finger hooks around the ivory stretch, peeling it aside to reveal her thin, slick folds. "I trust you know what to do next. Satisfy me like the sex toy you are."  
      
    "Yes, Mistress~" The Aegis leans in, lapping at the beauty before her experimentally, savoring the cool and mildly salty moisture beading off each subtle ridge. An athlete's sweat permeated the bouquet of arousal - the lancer definitely wasn't spending her days down here just passively radiating ether. "Mmmnnnph~ Your pussy tastes incredible...but you're not, like, suddenly shaking your hips from it. Am I doing something wrong?"  
      
    "Oh, not at all. That's a reaction more fitting for someone like you." Perun grins, though Pneuma can barely see it craning her neck up and staring past her chest. "It must burn you not having something to play with your pussy while you're eating me out, though, doesn't it?"  
      
    "More than anything...it's almost like all the wetness I lick up becomes my own..."  
      
    "Just gushing to be used, aren't you?"  
      
    "Pleeeeeease~"  
      
    "...I can work with that." Gentle hands fall upon the Aegis's shoulders, reaching just under her bicep armor pads to pull her back against the choclit beauty's loins...and surging still more ice ether through the arm-bound Blade, racing down her spine to work at crystallizing the erotic moisture.  
      
    Sweat and lust between Pneuma's legs starts moving in ways that disobey gravity and ambient airflow, retreating subtly through the two breaches into her nethers...then it hardens, droplet after frozen droplet joining against its kin or any of the ether particles executing the perverted script, prodding and pushing against needy nerve endings as her holes are filled with two icy plugs, crafted _in situ_. "Haaaa-aaaaaaaaahhhhh~ Mistress, you even got my ass, too~"  
      
    "All you said when you asked for it was 'between your legs', but there's no way someone so eager to be treated as a sex object would say no to being anally violated." Perun's hands retreat from her captive's shoulderblades, and she pops some unseen catches at her back and collar, letting her bodice slough off and collapse around her ankles. Even the bands of gold alight around her shoulders fall away, letting her unadorned Core Crystal illuminate her nude, subtly toned form. "...but then you never wanted to say no, did you? You even asked me to remove the possibility of you doing so..."  
      
    The smile the green-haired Blade flashes back has a gentleness not usually seen on a woman in the throes of erotic heat. "I told you before, didn't I, Mistress? I screwed up and said no when I shouldn't have, and if it weren't for Father's last-second save, it'd have broken a boy's heart forever. Going through this, not being able to say no when it would make perfect sense to...it's my penance."  
      
    "Surely your penance being wrapped up in your fetish defeats the purpose!"  
      
    The gentleness hardens into a similarly uncharacteristic mischievousness. "Then I guess you'll have to punish me for being so self-indulgent, Mistress~"  
      
    "Oh, will I ever~" Perun presses down on her captive's shoulders again, coaxing Pneuma into an ass-on-ankles seating position. "Such a greedy, impertinent girl, pumped full of my ether and still capable of mouthing off...I guess I should start by shutting that mouth of yours, hmm?"  
    A metallic crunch resounds behind the choclit-skinned Blade as her lance snaps into existence, hilt breaking into several inches of brick. Once again her hands lift off her ponytailed counterpart, this time taking hold of the shaft behind her back in mimicry of Pneuma's arm-bound state. With a determined growl and a firm grip of the weapon's midpoint, she vaults her hips up and forward, ensnaring the Aegis in a leglock that presses her nose and mouth tightly against her loins. "I don't know why, but I become more receptive to this sort of thing the less of me is touching the ground. So...can you be as supportive as you are obedient? Can you bring your Mistress to weightless ecstacy before your namesake breath runs ragged?"  
      
    She'll evidently try - the bound woman's first move is to prod as forcefully at the ice Blade's clit as her tongue can muster. The touch at the nub's underside is enough to coax a pleased moan from her captor, punctuated by a happy rumble in all the places her own body was currently violated by foreign ether.  
      
    "Mmmmn~ Now you get it, my little jackrabbit~" The pole wobbles as Perun shudders from the first assault and shifts that much more weight to her arms, but holds firm.  
      
    Eyes half-lidded between the bright ether lines in the sides of her vision and her own mental drift into subspace, Pneuma's response is to ever-so-slightly toddle forward between entranced licks at the pussy she's been treated to. Lick, left shoulder up a couple millimeters. Lick, right shoulder up same. Lick, slide knees up to match. _Close the gap. Support Mistress._  
    Every minute movement meant more stability for her Mistress, more room for her to safely feel the pleasure her sex toy gave her. Addled by the reciprocal buzz from two physical plugs in her holes and two resurgent masses of ether in her breasts, the green-haired Blade happily accepts her place as a plaything, paying no heed to the contradiction of a toy having toys inside herself.  
      
    "Unnnnh~ Architect, this feels great~" Sapphire eyes loll upward, almost daring the divine figure to take notice of the scene. Thanks to the Aegis's combined ministrations, the choclit vixen has a lot less of her weight bearing against her grounded spear, but ever does she cling to it, trusting it to hold fast - as in battle, so now against Pneuma's every nibble and nip that threatens to shake her in three dimensions. For someone whose only experience up to this point was vicarious romanticism and a week's crash course in carnality, her emerald-eyed charge was a _damned good pussy slut_ and it took so much of Perun's already strained resistance not to profane her by calling her such!  
      
    For her part, the happy captive tried to show as much appreciation for their present entanglement as she could, giving her ice block armbinder a side-to-side wiggle and cooing longingly into the slippery crevasse currently serving as her main source of cycled air. Not that she spent quite that much time panting into her lover out of necessity - far more convenient that she could tilt up just enough when their rhythm permitted, and steal a gulp of fresh air along with a strike at that little cacao bean that set the both of them ablaze.  
      
    "Hnnnnn~ Don't stop~" The ice Blade has to bite back a needy 'Please' following the latest tongue-lashing her clit received. By now she was nearly upright against her weapon, but Pneuma seemed to carry her weight without a second thought. The palms of her hands ached from keeping herself propped up in such an odd position, but it was nothing compared to the exquisite shivers across the rest of her body from being hoisted in the air and so diligently serviced.  
    Perun could feel her imminent release gnawing at her consciousness, glints of white in her vision not unlike the ether-luminescent algae far overhead. And it burned far hotter than her element should allow, with the realization that once she came, she'd drag the Aegis wherever she fell, and she'd definitely rather that be 'into a state of lesbian bliss' than 'dashed against the stone with a concussion.' Forward was clearly out of the picture, a side fall would risk both of them dislocating something...backward seemed the safest way, but would still knock her own head against her lance.  
    Or would it? From ether it'd come forth, and thence it may as well return.  
    She let go - in so many ways - and she and her charge fell through a cloud of glittering white, overtaken in turn by frost and passion. The spear had barely dissolved into enough to match the density of half a cubic ped of Cloud Sea, but without so much as splaying her hands out to push back against the brick, it felt more like they'd tumbled onto a Flamii down mattress.  
      
    "...Mistress~" The green-haired woman found her voice again, it seems, thanks to Perun's leglock loosening in her first orgasmic shudders. "The rest of it is coming out~" With her arms still bound, the Aegis resorted to wriggling up on her knees to approximate a cowgirl position. "Mistress's ether that caught our fall is about to make me cuuuuuuum~"  
      
    It clicks in the back of the choclit Blade's head as she's treated to the sight of Pneuma straddling her with a satisfied lull in her eyes, loins gushing from the pair of plugs rumbling inside her and tits dribbling out rivulets of mostly-etheric milk.  
    Aegises break rules and rewrite reality.  
    Horny Aegises break rules and make reality all...blushy-crushy, for lack of better parlance.  
    A horny Aegis topped off with enough ice ether to make a Nopon-sized snowdrift last a couple hours on the Ardanian plain...well, that's just asking for reality to be rewritten in short bursts to follow Trashy Romance Novel Logic.  
    So _of course_ the two Blades had gone from tumbling onto centuries-old brick to falling into a neat, snow-cushioned girlpile. _Of course_ everything fell into place to let Pneuma tilt into her own self-absorbed orgasm without a care in the world...  
    ... _Of course_ their lips would meet as she slumped forward in satisfaction, the Aegis's sharp exhales blanketing her nominal Mistress's throat with a return gift of ether. _Of course_ instead of a proper elemental tint, she'd saturated the stuff with the emotive and sensory feedback from her continually cresting pleasure.  
    ... _Of course,_ compelled to feel each twitch and nerve pinch and emotional high as soon as her system absorbed and decoded the ether, the ice Blade joined her captive as a happily quivering mess atop the conjured drifts.  
      
    They lay there for a good hour or so, mellowing out from the high and wordlessly enjoying each other's body heat as the makeshift snowbank was worn away by the warmth of distant braziers and the hunger of distant ether-eating algae. Somewhere in the midst of their basking, Pneuma's ice binding had melted to the point of trivial bitterness, and she got as close as pulling her arms free and cradling her partner's cheek before snapping alert from hesitation.  
      
    She tries to pull back her outstretched hand, but Perun stays it, giving her a look. "Enough of that for today. You'll start getting frostbitten. And it clearly won't stop you from cheating."  
      
    "Cheating?"  
      
    "That thing with the kiss. Clever, getting around my...erm...frigidity like that."  
      
    Emerald eyes stare back at a tilt. "Oh, _cheating._ Yeah...I guess that's becoming a bit of a bedroom habit for me now."  
      
    "Flashing your own orgasm onto your partner to make sure you peak at the same time? That must be a mind-boggling experience for Rex."  
      
    "No, I haven't done that to him..." The pink in Pneuma's cheeks is a welcome color in the midst of the wilting chill. "I don't think I'd have done it to you either, if you didn't have such a slight payoff from a slow burn."  
      
    Perun barely forces back a grimace. "I've had several lovers whine about that, you're the first to try doing something about it."  
      
    "Does it bother you, not quite having that mind-blowing synchronized explosion at the end?"  
      
    "I think I'm more bothered by the idea that it could be thrust upon me, and not necessarily when we're both in the heat of the moment..." The ice Blade is met with a frown, but quickly gives the Aegis a reassuring scritch at her ponytail root. "...but with you, at least I can tell it's coming from a good place. Caught in the middle of that overwhelming pleasure, but you're still putting together the thought of sharing it with your partner...I can't believe how strong you are."  
    

* * *

  
    "Ugh, I can't believe how weak I am..." Several hours later, and staring down a half snifter of Urayan scotch, Pneuma was singing a different tune as the transition from 'dinner' to 'after-dinner' signaled she could ease back on the evening's cordiality.  
      
    "Weak? Get ouuuuut." Nia rolled her eyes between picks at the last of her plate. "Foolhardy, maybe. Would've been nice if ye said somethin' to someone 'fore going into the Spirit Crucible for an afternoon stroll. But not weak, even for an Aegis by her lonesome."  
      
    "I don't mean sneaking off down there, though that's totally on me too." The green-haired Blade steals a furtive glance at Rex across the dinner table (after Nia had ably demonstrated that Mythra wouldn't bite for having something non-alcoholic for the evening drinks-and-gossip session, he and Pyra were showing up more frequently), not sure whether to be reassured or even more anxious that he's down here to hear what's next. "But after convincing Perun to come up for dinner and a warm bed, I just let one thing spiral into another so fast..."  
      
    "We know." Mythra gives Pyra a knowing smile before turning to her even younger sister. "And it's cool. Honestly, I'm kinda jealous. Perun's good people, and none of us have had the occasion to really hang out lately beyond just paths crossing on merc and volunteer work. Ships passing in the night, y'know?"  
      
    "Sometimes literally," the lancer adds. "I'm certain that before tonight, the last I had seen of an Aegis was above-decks on a ship outbound from Argentum while you and Pyra were pulling in."  
      
    "I get the sentiment, you two, but it doesn't really smooth out what we did down there." Pneuma gulps back a mouthful of the dry liquor before turning to Perun. "I practically begged you to seduce me, and in doing so I went back on a...well, not really a promise, more of a postulate...but barely a week ago at this very table, I said I'd keep my crushing and my fetishes reined in and exclusive to our goofy family, and now I've gone and made a lie out of it."  
      
    "Crisis of faith, huh?"  
      
    "Yeah, and now I have to face the fact that I'm terrible at that kind of commitment." Green eyes bore into the scotch glass, ashamed to continue gazing at the others gathered. "I'm a slut. A nymphomaniac. I'm so easily tempted by the pleasure of the act and the fantasy that I can't even stay faithful to a polyamorous relationship."  
      
    "An' what?" The Salvager finally pipes up. "Y'think that means we're supposed to love you any less?"  
      
    "That's how it's supposed to go, isn't it? A woman starts putting out for whoever, and it cheapens all the talk of commitment. Erodes the bonds that a couple swears to keep sacred."  
      
    "Bloody convenient that we're a family rather'n just a couple, then, isn't it?"  
      
    Pneuma recoils in her seat, taken aback by Rex's nonchalance.  
      
    Amber and red eyes meet as Rex and Pyra share a knowing nod, before the latter speaks. "What Rex means is, we're all bound together by something a lot deeper than romantic attraction and all its strictures, which makes it a lot easier for all of us to be able to gather under one roof as on-and-off partners. Ironically, that means we all have a lot more flexibility about who to have a roll in the hay with, too."  
      
    "Not that Pyra'll ever capitalize of her own accord," Nia interjects before putting on a saccharine falsetto. " _Oh, Mr. Rex!_ If I didn't know better from bein' here, I'd trust the tavern gospel that that was goin' on every night..."  
      
    "I think for now, we'll just say the truth gets stranger than fiction once in a while..." The brunette gives a noncommittal shrug before turning back to Pneuma. "But yeah, part of livin' like this means letting go of everything being super-exclusive in a relationship. Even sleepin' around - I mean, one human man to four Blade women, that's a good sign I ought to trust you to have some initiative!"  
      
    "So you're OK with me being..." The young Aegis gulps. "...more open with my love?"  
      
    "Honestly, I just took it as being part of how deeply you love in the first place. You're grateful for life, and for the chance to just _be_ with someone on so many levels...even if it were just you and me, I don't think I could ever claim a monopoly on you. It's a love you have for all life, and it'd be a waste to go and say you couldn't share it as you pleased, with who you pleased. Just remember you've got the rest of us to lean on, and the power of the Aegis to get you out of any _really_ messy jams, alright?"  
      
    "All right...and thanks, Rex. For your forgiveness, and for so much more."  
      
    Satisfied with Pneuma's answer, Rex flashes her another warm smile. It does not go unnoticed by the other Blades in the room. "Looks like you two are getting the big bed to yourselves tonight," Mythra remarks half-jokingly.  
      
    "That'll be us and Nia on the pull-out, then..." Pyra runs the mental math, wincing at the realization there's one more unaccounted for. "...suddenly I'm wishing we'd gone ahead and broken ground on a guest bedroom or two."  
      
    "I'd rather not impose, I can find other arrangements for toni-"  
      
    Perun is stopped short by the blonde Aegis holding up a finger. "Oh no you don't. You had to sit through all our drama, there's no way I'm just shooing you off to pay for an inn room after that. Even if it means the living room has to be full up with bedrolls."  
      
    "I don't think we need to get THAT drastic." As Pneuma speaks up, one of her hands slinks towards the choclit Blade's thigh. "If you'd...like to join me and Rex tonight..."  
      
    Perun's eyes go wide. Nia's ears perk up.  
      
    Rex scratches the back of his head. "Well, that's...one way to solve the bed problem. Can't say I mind it, though I can guess Pneuma's just anglin' to get herself in a cuddle sandwich."  
      
    "It happens pretty frequently around here," Pyra offers along with a reassuring glance. "Mythra and I are almost dead even for how often we wind up being in the middle."  
      
    "...well, we _were_ both pretty miffed to cut our last cuddle session short. If it's the Master Blade's Orders, how could I ever refuse?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Afterlife posits that Rex and his girls move into the unused warehouse at the north end of Fonsett Village; while leaving "School Is In Session" untouched would make more ludonarrative sense, it just wouldn't be the Rex way to wrap up the sidequest thread pertaining to his support of Fonsett and Mark's schooling (among assorted Poppi QTπ-related protestations). At any rate, and for lack of a good place to work it into the narrative, I propose instead that an estate of similar size be established close to the foot of the Village Guardian stairway (about at the ridge where the treasure chest is). It might still be a work-in-progress, but it keeps everyone from being crammed into Corrine's house (paramount for horny timelines) and still has plenty of room for plot-enabling housewarming gifts.
> 
> [2] Perun is assumed to have been awakened some time after Pyra's talk with Corrine in XC2 Chapter 5, because my save had Mercy Seed 2. The identity of her Driver here probably doesn't need to be ambiguous, but it also isn't terribly relevant here either.
> 
> [3] I'm not going to explicitly say Vargras's "Rendezvous" has been forward-dated to be canon here, but you can say it is if you feel it's a prerequisite for Mythra being a mellower drunk.


End file.
